Mansion of the Living Dead

Oh, Jess Franco. We meet again. My continuous problem with Jess Franco is that I generally really like the concepts of his movies. Mansion of the Living Dead, for example is about two lesbian couples on vacation who encounter a cult of undead monks. I’m totally there for that summary! It’s just that Franco likes to fill in his admittedly interesting concepts with mostly softcore porn and surprisingly incompetent filmmaking for a man who made over 175 films during his lifetime.

The film’s leads are four strippers named Lea, Mabel, Caty and Candy. Two are blonde, two are brunette. I can hardly tell them apart beyond this. The ladies take a vacation to be a lovely but suspiciously vacant hotel. The only other people there are various creepy workers. Initially, the women have fun frolicking topless and having lesbian sex. But eventually a horror movie breaks through the softcore porn. Lea goes for a walk and never returns. Later, Mabel is also taken. The baddies of the film are a group of cursed, undead monks. A creepy hotel worker has been providing the monks with women for them to rape and kill because… reasons. The worker also has his girlfriend chained to a bed. Don’t worry about it. Luckily for the undead rapist monks, one of the film’s leads is the reincarnation of someone who can break their skeletal curse.

By the end of the first act, I had a weird amount of goodwill towards Mansion of the Living Dead. I guess I was just in the right mood for it. (I’d been drinking.) Even here, the film still had all the of Franco trademarks: deeply voyeuristic filmmaking, questionable camera angles, no depth of character and lengthy female sex scenes. But at least initially, I was having a good time. The characters are bland, yes. But that meant I was able to project traits onto them. I realized I genuinely didn’t want to see any of these four queer ladies die. Also, exploitative as the sex scenes obviously are, at least Jess Franco knows how lesbians have sex. That’s not a given in vintage softcore.

But by the end of the second act, Franco was back on my shit list. The endless scenes of women walking had begun to grate. But mostly, my problem is with the villains of the piece. I was initially excited by the fact that the villains in the film are spooky skeletons in robes! I love skeletons! But they’re not even skeletons, they’re just people in skeleton masks. Then, of course, all the spooky skeletons start raping women. This is not what skeletons are about! I don’t want to see rape in my fun times, stupid horror movie to watch while drunk! I also hate the fact that this film is at least partially softcore porn and the rape scenes are absolutely part of that.

Weirdly, Franco’s complete incompetence as a filmmaker almost works in his favour in regards to the scenes of sexual violence. The fact that he’s bad at camera angles undercuts how horrific it is. This does make it easier to watch. There’s still far too much screen time dedicated to poorly shot rape scenes, though. Mansion of the Living Dead is yet another piece of vintage softcore that lusts over female sexuality while simultaneously shaming it. Yes, the rapists in this one are the villains. But there’s just so much verbal misogyny and depictions of sexual violence here. It’s also revealed the women were targeted for their gender and sexual behaviour.

In general, the problem with a Franco film is his priorities. It’s like the movie Inside Out, where various emotions can control the brain. Franco’s driving force is the horny emotion. Fuck any sort of justifiable creative output. That comes a distant second to his voyeuristic tendencies. None of the characters in the film have sex with women because they would identify as queer or have an innate attraction to women. No, they have sex with women because Jess Franco likes watching women have sex. Mansion of the Living Dead tells you more about the director and his sexual kinks than it does any of the characters. Also, based on the focus of this movie, I guess he has a major fetish for women walking.

Jess Franco films are endlessly frustrating because there’s usually a seed of a good idea. They’re also never coy or subtextual in their depiction of female/female sexuality. That shit’s overt and unavoidable. But as I keep reiterating, this all falls apart because his overwhelming priority is horny. Mansion of the Living Dead is one of the better Jess Franco films I’ve seen. Decent locations help disguise his shite camerawork and there is a story to round out the softcore porn. But being an above average Jess Franco film still means this is still a bad film by any other metric.

Overall rating: 3.1/10

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